Based in Kiev, Ukrainian ceramic artist Jeva Smith creates abstract and anthropomorphic sculptures. Her skills as a maker are self-taught and her explorations in creative expression began when she was very young. Throughout her childhood and teenage years, she recalls experimenting with various forms of visual art until she found that clay was best suited to communicating her ideas. 

“The handmade is a key element for me,” she says. “My hands are the transmitters of my creative ideas."

Her pieces are deliberately open-ended, allowing the viewer to see a story of their own in the strange, body-like forms. Limb-like tentacles of clay reach at once towards the sky and towards each other, an echo of an embrace. 

“The collection included in Cluster is devoted to tactility,” she explains. “I tried to provide different impressions of touch with sculptural forms. As I work with clay it is always a process of merging with the material, at some point the edge of my skin and clay surface dissolves.”

Smith enjoys the feeling of history that working with clay provides, a sense that it has been used for so many centuries, and its ability to connect her to the earth. 

“Clay is probably the most archaic material,” she explains. “Working with it means interacting directly with the earth. It is like a living creature - the result is always somehow unexpected.”

Ideas, Smith says, often appear in her dreams. By the time she is in her studio they are alive in her mind and ready to express themselves through her. 

“This series was intended as a way to try to get in touch with others from somewhere inside. A kind of throwing of a message in the outer space saying ‘Hello, I am